Jim Holdridge and Callie Carson “Little Shop of Horrors,” Howard Ashman’s musical version of Roger Corman’s 1960 cult film classic, was an unlikely but welcome surprise when it invaded the off-Broadway circuit in 1982.

The smash hit ran for well over 2,000 performances, won three awards for Best Musical, spawned a hit film version (starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin) and was the highest grossing production in off-Broadway history.

Cabrillo Music Theatre’s recent staging of the musical featured inspired performances in a lively production directed by Lewis Wilkenfeld.

The show for the most part follows the plot of the Corman film: Seymour Krelborn (Jim Holdridge), a nebbish orphan who works for Mushnik’s, a Skid Row florist, discovers a potted plant that feeds on human blood.

Seymour is in love with fellow worker Audrey (Callie Carson), who is the girlfriend of the sadistic dentist Orin Scrivello (played with relish by Damon Kirsche).

The plant, which Seymour names Audrey II after his unrequited love interest, grows to monstrous proportions and begins demanding human sacrifices from Seymour, promising him good fortunes in return. In the end, the ravenous Audrey II is revealed to be part of an extraterrestrial plan to take over the Earth.

The show is an acquired taste, if you will, with a sprightly score by Ashman and composer Alan Menken, modeled after ’50s doowop and ’60s girl groups. Ashman included a female singing trio whose characters’ names were taken from actual ’60s girl groups: the Chiffons, the Ronettes and the Crystals.

Played by Robyn Jackson, Domonique Paton and Nicole Tillman, the girls pop in and out of scenes, acting as a Greek chorus during the proceedings. Their best moments come in the “Prologue” and “Da-Doo,” in which Audrey II is magically transformed by a solar eclipse.

The elaborate puppetry needed to animate Audrey II was magnificently accomplished by James W. Gruessing.

There isn’t much one can do with the role of Seymour that wasn’t done by the film’s Rick Moranis, who’s made a career of playing semi-lovable schnooks. Holdridge has a pleasing voice (“Suddenly, Seymour”) but has to hide it in favor of a nasal delivery that falls somewhere between Moranis and Jerry Lewis in “The Nutty Professor.”

As Audrey, Callie Carson channels Judy Holliday as the blonde ditz with a past. Seymour and Audrey are both self-abusive characters; Seymour feeds the carnivorous plant through selfmutilation while Audrey engages in a sadomasochistic relationship with the brutishly hilarious Orin.

Audrey’s solo on “Somewhere That’s Green” shows her limited, sweetly pathetic ambition: to live in a suburban tract house scented with Pine-Sol and watch “I Love Lucy” while eating TV dinners.

Veteran actor Gibby Brand plays Mushnik, a stereotypically Jewish New York shop owner who peppers his speech with Yiddishisms. Initially, you sympathize with Mushnik’s plight and his run-down shop, but when he adopts Seymour as strictly a mercenary move, he becomes merely opportunistic.

Damon Kirsche plays five other roles in addition to the gleefully malevolent Orin and wheels out all of his costumes and wigs during the curtain call, to great applause from the audience. It would probably be just as entertaining to watch his rapid costume changes as it is his performances.

The jivey, soul-soaked voice of Audrey II belongs to Kameren Neal, a veteran local performer who played Angel in “Rent” in Simi Valley this past January and whose roots go back to a performance of “The Wiz” in 1998, when he was 11.

The five-piece orchestra, led by Matthew Smedal, performed the bubbly songs, while Musical Theatre West provided the colorful sets and costumes.